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Music, Dandelions
What Music Speaks, part ten
Have a baby that becomes a toddler and when you’re walking down a sidewalk and see a dandelion, pluck that dandelion, kneel down and blow the white puff in front of their face and watch how their eyes widen. Maybe they startle for a second or maybe they scream first and then laugh in delight, or better yet, they scream-laugh. Delight in them asking for more. Pluck another one. Breathe, blow. Watch the four walls of their life change by a thing that started as a flower and then — with your breath — became magic.
The dandelion is music. At its best, we delight in it like the toddler.
There is the life before the dandelion and the life after. When we discover certain music, certain songs for the first time, the intoxicating sound of it is the dandelion, a simple, bright yellow flower. When that music consumes us and when we in turn, devour it, eyes closed, ears wide, they — and we — are transformed into a cascade of tiny parachutes trailing into the breeze, falling to the earth and spreading, beginning again, to do unto others what they have done unto us.
The dandelion is often considered a pesky weed. To some it’s the rodent of the floral world, hearty enough to flourish in sidewalk cracks and the grooves of gutters and a gardener’s scourge, ripped, tossed, trashed. To others, the dandelion…
